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LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 

DEC 31 1903 

Copyci^tit Entry 
CUSS ^ XXc. No. 
■ COPY B 



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Cl^e Tan Cortlannt Bomz 

at Van Cortlandt Park, King's Bridge, N. Y., was 
opened as a Public Museum on May 27, 1897. It is 
under the management of the Society of Colonial Dames 
of the State of New York, and was leased to them by 
the city for a term of twenty-five years. This lease was 
obtained by a special act of legislature, as the city did 
not possess the power to give a lease for so long a term 
of years. 

The house is open to the public under the rules gov- 
erning all public museums, with resident custodians and 
the police in attendance, and is directly connected with a 
fire alarm and the nearest police station. 

The Society of Colonial Dames has pledged itself to 
support the house for twenty years longer, but it has 
proved so attractive to the public, affording as it does 
unusual interest and the opportunity for both study and 
amusement, that it is almost certain that at the expira- 
tion of the present lease it will still be continued as a 
museum. Its visitors numbered last year (1902) one 
hundred and fifty thousand, and the average number of 
visitors each month is rapidly increasing. 

All articles intrusted to the Society of Colonial Dames 
for exhibition at the Van Cortlandt House should ante- 
date 1776, unless of such especial interest, historically or 
artistically, as to add to the attraction of the museum, in 
which case the date may be as late as 1825. The Com- 
mittee in charge of the house have the responsibility of 
deciding all such questions ; and will give proper re- 
ceipts to the owners. All articles lent to the house 
are insured, every possible care is taken of them, and all 
proper provision made for their safety. The books of 
index are kept most carefully, and in duplicate, and the 
transfer of all articles is under especial care. 



Van Cortlandt House can be reached from New York by the 
New York Central from the Grand Central Depot, and by the 
Sixth Avenue elevated road, which connects at 155th Street 
with the Putnam Division of the New York Central. 




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€]^e Tan CortlanDt i^oujse 

[UILT in 1748, stands upon lands secured, in 
1646, by the eminent Adriaen Van der Donck, 
the first lawyer of the Colony of New Nether- 
lands, as a reward for successfully negotiating an Indian 
treaty of considerable importance. The situation of the 
lands and the salt meadows which formed a part of them 
— "a flat with some convenient meadows about it " — 
pleased his fancy, bringing to him, as it did, memories of 
his home in Holland, and a purchase from the Indians, 
ratified by a grant from Director-General William Kieft, 
made it his. 

He built his bouwerie^ or farm-house, at the side of the 
present lake, then a brook, and farmed at his pleasure 
that plain which lies between it and what is now Broad- 
way, and which extends from the salt meadows of which 
he spoke to the southerly end of Vault Hill. When he 
died in 1654, this tract of land passed into the possession 
of his widow, the daughter of the Reverend Francis 
Doughty of Maspeth, Long Island. She afterward mar- 
ried Hugh O'Neale of Patuxet, Maryland, and by a new 
grant, made to herself and her husband in 1666, Van 
der Donck's tract became " O'Neale's Patent." They in 
their turn assigned the patent to Mrs. O'Neale's brother, 
Elias Doughty, considering themselves unable to manage 
its affairs properly, from the considerable distance of their 
Maryland home. 

Doughty disposed of the property in various parcels, 
two thousand acres being purchased in 1668 by William 
Betts and his son-in-law George Tippetts (who gave his 
name to the brook known to the Indians as Moshulu)^ and 
a tract covering the site of the present Van Cortlandt 
House was conveyed by Doughty to Thomas Del avail, 

vii 



Frederick Philipse and Thomas Lewis; Philipse after- 
ward securing the whole from his co-purchasers. This 
Frederick Philipse, Lord of the Manor of Philipse, ex- 
tending from the Croton River to Spuyten Duyvil Creek, 
became in the course of time the richest man in the 
colony, with an influence strengthened by an alliance with 
one of its most prominent families. He married Catharine, 
daughter of Olaf Stevense Van Cortlandt, and as her brother 
Jacobus Van Cortlandt had already married Frederick 
Philipse's adopted daughter, Eva, the connection was a 
double one. 

In 1699 Jacobus Van Cortlandt bought from his father- 
in-law the fifty acres called George's Point. To this he 
added several hundred acres during his lifetime, and this 
first purchase, together with the lands he afterward added 
to it, somewhat increased in acreage as time went on by 
those who came after him, remained in the sole possession 
of the Van Cortlandt family until 1889, when it was ac- 
quired by the City of New York for the purposes of a 
public park. 

Jacobus Van Cortlandt built himself a house, probably 
near or upon the site of Van der Donck's old bouwerie. 
He dammed Tippett's Brook to make himself a mill- 
pond, the present Van Cortlandt Lake, below which a 
stream finds outlet into Spuyten Duyvil Creek. He built 
at the side of this mill-pond a saw- and grist-mill, which 
was in active use for over a hundred years. In the rev- 
olution this mill was used by the British and Continentals 
alike, and surviving to peaceful times was used as a grist- 
mill until 1889. It was destroyed by lightning in 1901, 
and one of the mill-stones is preserved and set in the base 
of the sun-dial in the Dutch garden. 

Like most men of the time of his wealth and standing, 
Jacobus Van Cortlandt adopted methods of living almost 
patriarchal in their independence of the outside world. 
Were there buildings to be constructed, his own carpenters 
and masons could build them and, once built, keep them 
in repair. Blacksmiths and millwrights, skilled laborers 
for all needs, were at his command. Flax for the gar- 
ments was raised upon the farm, and on the place it was 



spun and woven. Stock was raised, crops planted and 
harvested, and over all, indoors and out, was the dominat- 
ing influence, the watchful direction, of master and 
mistress. 

At his death, he bequeathed to his only son this "his 
farm, situate, lying and being in a place commonly called 
and known by the name of Little or Lower Tonkers"; and 
it was this son, Frederick Van Cortlandt, who built, in 
1748, the present Van Cortlandt House. 

The house is built of rubble stone, with brick set about 
the windows. Traditionally it is said to be modelled, 
upon a smaller scale, after the Philipse Manor House at 
Yonkers. Entirely free from any ostentatious architecture, 
it yet suggests to a large degree the substantial comfort 
of the era which it represents. It preserves the influences 
of past time, and presents within a faithful reproduction 
of ways and fashions now passed away but increasingly 
interesting to those who are observant of the evolution of 
social and domestic affairs as evidenced in the contrasted 
surroundings of our great-grandfathers and, ourselves. 

An odd feature of the house is the peculiar appearance 
of the window glass, most of which resembles ground 
glass. This it is not, but was, when placed in the win- 
dows, ordinary transparent glass. No satisfactory theory 
has been presented, even by scientists, of the causes of its 
disintegration. The box formerly in the garden and the 
salt water of the creek have been suggested as possible 
causes, but it must be remembered that many old houses 
with their glass windows have passed centuries in the 
proximity of both box borders and salt water, with no 
consequent chemical change in the glass. 

Above the windows on the outer walls are set queer 
carved stone faces, satyrlike in appearance, and each differ- 
ing from the other. It is not known whence they were 
brought, presumably from Holland, where such corbels 
upon the old houses are not uncommon. 

Each room in the house as it is at present is furnished 
with ornaments, furniture, or utensils genuinely old, and in 
most cases historic, and everything is arranged in strict 
accordance with the fashions and customs of colonial days. 



The high Dutch stoep^ with its side seats, affords an 
appropriate setting to the Dutch half-doors by which the 
main entrance hall is entered. 



The parlor is upon the right on entering the main hall, 
and was intended, as are our modern drawing-rooms, to 
be a somewhat formal room. Noticeable among its fur- 
nishings are the spinet, the round-topped "turn-up table," 
a tall candle-stand, a writing-desk with a secret drawer, 
and among the old chairs, of which there are many in the 
room, is one which belonged to Henry Clay. The brass 
curtain-holders are curious because of their quaintness. 
On the walls hang four specimens of the celebrated work 
of the French artist St. Memin, done in chalk. They are 
portraits of Governor George Clinton and Mrs. Clinton, 
of the Honorable Aquila Giles and Mrs. Giles. There is 
also a large portrait of Robert Livingston (a copy of the 
original), given by a number of his descendants. Back of 
the fireplace is a curious wrought-iron piece which has 
always been in the house ; it represents Adam and Eve, 
the serpent and the tree of knowledge. At the top is 
seen a phoenix rising from the flames. It is a quaint old 
bit of symbolism. 

Across the hall from the parlor is the museum room. This 
room was occupied by General Washington in 1783, and 
except that it is no longer a bed-room, but is used instead 
as a museum, it is as it was during his occupancy of it. 
Like the parlor, it has the deep window-seats that are so 
suggestive of comfort. The fireplace is surrounded with 
blue scripture tiles brought from Holland, and the andirons, 
now there, are a pair which belonged to Benjamin Frank- 
lin. At one side of the room are two large wooden vul- 
tures, taken from a Spanish privateer in the revolutionary 



war, and presented to Augustus Van Cortlandt by Ad- 
miral Robert Digby of the British Navy. On the walls 
hang some old maps of more than usual interest and bear- 
ing date 1642. Among the relics displayed are very many 
possessing rare interest and value. They are too numerous 
to be separately mentioned, but each is plainly marked 
and easily seen, as are the contents of the two china closets 
on either side of the fireplace. 

This room is not without a romance, since it was here 
that the brave young officer Captain Rowe, of the prus- 
hauk yagers^ was carried when he had been mortally 
wounded while reconnoitring, and he died here in the 
arms of his bride elect, who had been hastily summoned 
from her home by the sad tidings of her lover's fatal 
wound, and arrived only in time to receive his dying 
embrace. 

n the dining-room there have gathered, in days past, 
distinguished guests. Washington and Rochambeau have 
partaken of its hospitality, and after them came William 
Henry, Duke of Clarence, afterward King William IV, 
together with Admiral Digby, who later sent to his host 
the two wooden vultures now in the museum room. 

The visits of men prominent in many walks of life were 
more than frequent, and the dining-room has memories 
which have helped to make the hospitality of the house 
a tradition. 

The small closet built in at the side of the mantel was 
a feature of many Colonial houses, used, it is probable, as a 
receptacle for many a delicacy, especially when the cold 
winters made the warm store closet, even if tiny, a decided 
convenience. The large white cupboard set across the 
corner of the room holds a store of old china, much of it 
priceless, and at one side of the room is an immense plat- 
ter made in the Azores from designs taken from New 
England, and a pewter platter from the Franklin house 
in Franklin Square used by General Washington in 1789 
as the Presidential Mansion. 

xi 



A dinner-table of generous proportion and a table 
which belonged to John Alden are also among the furni- 
ture of this room. 

The kitchen, perhaps, takes us back into the past more 
completely than any other part of the house, since it differs 
so widely from any of the domestic arrangements of 
to-day. 

The huge fireplace with its surrounding caldrons, pone 
pots and brazing kettles, the long-handled shovels, the 
curiously patterned waffle-irons, the long pele for drawing 
out the hot pans of bread or cake from the brick oven 
built in at the side of the hearth, all speak of other times. 
At one side of the room is a dresser filled with old pewter, 
and near the hearth stands a three-cornered china closet. 
Under the window opposite is a wide old-fashioned settle, 
and over the mantel are hung a flint-lock gun, a rifle cut 
down to a shorter length, and the accompanying powder 
horn. 

Almost every utensil used in old-fashioned cookery has 
been obtained by either gift or loan for the kitchen, and 
there may be noticed beside the unusually numerous ar- 
ray of pots and pans, etc., many quaint articles less often 
seen. A tin mould for making candles, a spice-grinder, 
a board for making New Year's cakes, a curious old lamp 
with reflectors, which was used in an illumination in honor 
of George IV, and many other things of varying interest 
combine to render for the kitchen a charm which ap- 
peals to most of its visitors. 

The cellar, near it, has hand-hewn oaken beams, 
broadly substantial. On the west side are two openings, 
evidently intended for loop-holes, and it is presumed that 
all the windows were originally used for purposes of 
musketry defence. The cellar contained, it is not doubted, 
good store of Madeira and port of the famous brands of 
that day, even to that Madeira which, because it was 
buried during the revolution, was known, as long as it 
lasted, as the " Resurrection Madeira." 

xii 



When the brick oven in the kitchen was being cleaned 
out some years ago, a number of bottles of old metheglin 
were brought to light, much incrusted with ashes. Had 
they been empty, it would have excited no remark, but 
being full, the question was raised, though it has remained 
unanswered, as to who could have been so absent-minded 
as to forget the hiding-place of a beverage so dear to our 
great-grandfathers. ^ 

The word "metheglin" is derived from two Welsh 
words meaning " wine " and " splendid," and it is made of 
fermented honey, herbs, and spices. 

Cl^e 'Beti'-roomjJ 

The southwest bed-room contains the bed in which Gen- 
eral Washington slept ; it has been moved there from the 
room below. There is also in this room a chair which be- 
longed to him and which still has the same covering as 
when it was in use at Mount Vernon. 

An unusual article of furniture is a mahogany rest for a 
gouty foot ; it calls to mind pictures of old gentlemen with 
a suffering limb stiffly extended before them. Beside the 
bed are bed-steps, very necessary accompaniments of the 
high four-post bedsteads. On the mantel is a curious 
carved clock, and there are many old chests and chairs in 
the room worthy of notice. 

Across the hall is the east bed-room, containing, among 
other things, an old mahogany linen chest, a kas or press 
made in 1650, a quaint cradle studded with brass nails, 
and bearing the date (in nail-heads) 1734. A toy cradle 
and table are miniatures of the furniture of the elders. A 
yellow painted chair, plain and unimposing, belonged to 
Daniel Webster, and a chair with a reading-rest at one 
side is one which was owned by Israel Putnam. 



The spinning-room, back of the east bed-room, has a 
collection of spinning-wheels, reels, hatchets, etc., and is 

ziii 



devoted principally to the products of needle craft. The 
samplers, framed and hanging on the walls, are worthy 
of study, and in the two cases are specimens of handi- 
work which are of a unique interest. Especially note- 
worthy is a Cheshire quilt 125 years old, which depicts, in 
needlework, farm scenes realistically rendered: a milk- 
maid going to work, children, laborers, and dogs; even 
houses and trees figure upon it. 

In the hall, just outside the spinning-room, are narrow 
oaken stairs with hand-hewn banisters and a twisted land- 
ing indicative of Dutch thrift of space. They lead to the 
old wine-room on the third floor. 



€]^e J^ntcl) (0art)en 

In front of the house the turf and the old trees are as 
they were; beyond them and below the terrace a Dutch 
Garden has been laid out and planted, closely following, 
in its formal precision of arrangement, the style of the old 
Dutch gardens. This garden was made at the request of 
the Colonial Dames and has been carried to its present 
perfection by the persevering energy and the taste of Mr. 
John C. Eustis, appointed Park Commissioner for the 
Bronx in 1901. 

At the east side of the house stands a window from the 
old Sugar-house Prison. This historic window, with the 
surrounding section of wall, was presented to the Colo- 
dial Dames by T. J. Oakley Rhinelander, Esq. 

It was taken from the old warehouse on Duane Street, 
built in 1763 for the storage of sugar brought from the 
West Indies, and which was at the time of its erection 
the largest building of its kind in the city; its importance 
is indicated by the coins and parchment manuscript found 
in its cornerstone when it was torn down in 1892 to make 
way for a modern building. 

xiv 




Sugar House Window 



In 1776, during the occupancy of New York City by 
the British, like all the large buildings and most of the 
churches, it was pressed into service as a prison for Amer- 
ican soldiers. Five stories in height, its massive walls, 
small windows, and low ceilings made it only too fit a 
building for the use made necessary for it by the fortunes 
of war. Some idea of the existing conditions of these 
persons may be gained by remembering what was de- 
clared true of the prison ship "Jersey" which was in the 
same year anchored in the East River. It is said that the 
prisoners upon it were so crowded that, at night, the 
sleepers were all obliged to turn at one and the same 
moment, and at the word of command ! 

The cell, from which the window now at Van Cort- 
landt was taken, was evidently one of importance. It was 
on the ground tier and of peculiarly strong construction. 
The stones, iron bars, and bricks were all numbered as 
they were removed, and now occupy exactly the same 
relative position as when they formed a part of the build- 
ing itself. 

Between the stones and bricks of the prison were found 
coins, rude implements, and weapons, concealed, it is 
probable, by prisoners who awaited a chance to escape, 
and waited in vain. Brave men they were, and their 
deaths from disease, hunger, and want, are no less glorious 
than the deaths of those who fell in battle. The name of 
Cunningham, English Provost Marshal of New York 
from 1776 to 1783, is closely associated with the sufferings 
of the unfortunate men kept prisoners in the Sugar House 
and other prison buildings; it also appears in history with 
that of Nathan Hale, whose last hours were embittered by 
the hostility of his jailer. 

On either side of the prison window stand two old 
guns, found on the site of the American Fort Independ- 
ence and lent to the Colonial Dames by William O. 
Giles, Esq. 

To the north of the Van Cortlandt House rises Vault 
Hill, on whose summit is the family vault of the Van 
Cortlandts. It was on this hill that General Washington, 
in 1781, ordered camp-fires to be lit, in order that the 



XV 



British then occupying New York, as far north as King's 
Bridge, might be deceived into thinking his forces were 
still there, while in reality he had withdrawn them to 
join Lafayette at Yorktown. 

The valley lying between Vault Hill and King's Bridge 
was the scene of almost constant skirmishing during the 
revolution, and in turning up the present parade ground, 
the cannon-balls and bullets, the fragments of bayonets, 
and the many other broken and rusted implements of war- 
fare all spoke eloquently of the long and bloody struggle 
maintained there by the two armies. 

At the beginning of the revolutionary war, General 
Washington visited King's Bridge, and "esteeming it a 
pass of the utmost importance in order to keep open com- 
munication with the country," he ordered several places 
which he had noticed as well calculated for defence to be 
fortified. This was done, eight defences being established 
at or near King's Bridge. In October, 1776, when Wash- 
ington withdrew the American troops from Manhattan 
Island to White Plains, the British advanced their north- 
ern line to King's Bridge and occupied the American 
works there, including Fort Independence on Tetard's 
Hill, which the gallant General Heath made a dashing if 
ineffectual attempt to retake in January, 1777, and where 
were dug up the two guns which flank the Sugar House 
window. 

At this time a picket-guard of Hessians, the green 
yagers, were garrisoned in the Van Cortlandt House. 
From the British "barrier" at King's Bridge, north to the 
Croton River extended the Neutral Ground, and the 
country immediately surrounding the house was the scene 
of constant military activity. Here were the camps of the 
yagers, mounted and foot, of Emmerick's chasseurs and 
Simcoe's rangers, and the numerous attempts of the 
American forces to recapture their posts occasioned many 
a smart skirmish, where the British troops were often en- 
gaged by the American light cavalry. The ravages of 
the irregular bands of "Cowboys" and "Skinners" were 
by no means infrequent in the neighborhood. 

Here, too, was the scene of the massacre of the Stock- 



XVI 



H 




bridge Indians who fought so well upon the American 
side, and here in the " Indian Field " were buried, in one 
unmarked grave, the bodies of the slain Indians. They 
were engaged on the morning of August 31, 1778, by 
Emmerick's chasseurs, and by Tarleton, leading the Legion 
Dragoons. Colonel Simcoe, hearing the smart firing of the 
Indians, moved his rangers rapidly upon the left flank of 
the Indians, thus surprising them. The Indians fought 
gallantly but against tremendous odds, and were finally 
forced to flee, nearly forty of them being killed or severely 
wounded. Colonel Simcoe was wounded in this engage- 
ment, which is one of the most noted in the warfare of the 
Neutral Ground. 

Surprise and defence, attack and repulse, held the sur- 
rounding country in a state of disquiet and desola- 
tion until the winter of 1782-83, when the British troops 
were withdrawn to New York, the people returned to 
their homes, or the ruins of them, and on the I2th of 
November, 1783, General Washington, after spending 
the night at the Van Cortlandt House, rode victorious, 
over King's Bridge. 

The history of the country adjacent to the Van Cort- 
landt House, which can be but so lightly and inadequately 
touched upon here, is bright with many an incident show- 
ing the bravery of the American patriot troops, and, ante- 
dating them, it is rich in memories and traditions of those 
other brave and sturdy men who made the Colonies for 
whose independence the soldiers of the revolution fought; 
and the Van Cortlandt House, with the relics it preserves 
within it revives many a bit of history and teaches many 
a lesson of patriotism.^ 

' Scharf's " History of Westchester County " and Bolton's " History 
of Westchester County " are the two authorities from which the his- 
torical facts of the preceding sketch have been taken. 



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LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 



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